Chapter 8. Setting up Hardware

8. Setting up Hardware

In the broadest sense, hardware is your computer and whatever connects to it; everything else is software. Windows generally uses the term to refer to a peripheral—nowadays usually called a device—which is any part of a computer other than the processor (CPU), motherboard, and memory (RAM and ROM). Your monitor, mouse, keyboard, hard disks, and printer are devices, as are digital cameras, MP3 players, backup drives, video recorders, external speakers, USB flash drives, and PDA synchronization cradles.

Windows treats any gadget connected to your PC as a device and requires you to install the software that controls it, called its device driver or simply driver. A driver translates a device’s outgoing commands to Windows and the incoming commands from Windows programs that are using the device. Modern Plug and Play devices install easily, and Windows offers wizards to help you install older non–Plug and Play devices.